Everything You Need to Know about Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Abuse - click on this link: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq1.html
Children of narcissistic parents grow up to become either sensitized or desensitized to narcissistic behaviours, traits, and personalities.
In adulthood, sensitized offspring are able to rapidly discern the presence of narcissists by reading their body language and by resonating with subtle cues emitted by the narcissist even when he is on his best behavior and when he puts on a show and embarks on his charm offensives. They experience repulsion, resentment, and rage and react by distancing themselves from the narcissistic source and, when this fails, by aggressively containing the narcissist. This âallergicâ reaction remains potent even with repeated exposures to the same source.
Desensitized individuals â a small minority - seek to recreate the experiences they have had with the narcissistic parent by becoming an Inverted Narcissist.
Both types of children of narcissists â the sensitized and the desensitized â conduct a lifelong dialog with the Good Mother and Bad Mother inner representations and introjects. It consists of the Bad (narcissistic) Mother disparaging the qualities of a Good (mentally healthy) Mother and forcing her Good (read: codependent) Son/Daughter to justify and defend her destructive misbehaviour and pernicious, insidious traits.
(From the book "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited" by Sam Vaknin - Click on this link to purchase the print book, or 16 e-books, or 3 DVDs with 16 hours of video lectures on narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/thebook.html)